Sentiment analysis is the process of determining the sentiment behind a text, conversation, or social media update. It’s been used on Twitter and other social media channels as a way to gauge public sentiment for years, and 86% of marketers are said to value it highly.
In Twilert and indeed in Twitter search, it is possible to find tweets that take on a positive or negative sentiment using the search operators 🙂 and 🙁 – indicating happiness and unhappiness. This type of basic research not only helps you get a feel for your brand and areas that need improvement, but it can also help you look for topics, competitors, and services that your customers like and dislike!
Variations of these emoticons 🙁 and 🙂 are also considered, which is useful, given how much we tend to use now on social media.
As marketers, we often think we know what our customers are thinking and feeling. But are we really? Expedia Canada used sentiment analysis to respond quickly and creatively to an ad error involving an ‘annoying violin sound’ that was widely reported on Twitter. Without gaining intelligence on the ‘feel’ of their customers’ responses on Twitter, they might have continued to think the soundbite in question was a great idea.
Studies that looked at sentiment analysis of Twitter posts about Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump over the last presidential election actually showed much more accurate results in arriving at the bottom line than many of the polls that openly polled people. Monkeylearn found that not only was Trump mentioned almost twice as often as Clinton, but also that Trump had a better positive-to-negative ratio than Clinton.
This can even be dated to certain events that occurred around the election. Remember when the FBI decided not to recommend prosecution in the email case surrounding Hilary? As a result, negative sentiment increased on Twitter, as you can see in the chart below.
This shows how sentiment analysis can be a great indicator of early wins and losses, as well as the general public’s sentiment about a topic or field. When customers are surveyed, they can sometimes inhibit what they think they should say or how they should act. When you track feelings, you are gaining insight into how they really feel.
Benefits of using sentiment analysis in business
As we know, Twitter is a reservoir for a huge amount of data. This data can be extremely useful for business decisions, researching new products, and deciding what content to share with your audience. Before social media you know what we relied on? Instinct. This is somewhat dangerous when used to determine where money moves.
As valuable as workshops, user testing groups, and customer surveys are, they take time, effort, and money that sentiment analysis on social media platforms can provide in minutes. Especially when you save the results using Twilert.
How to use sentiment analysis with Twilert
In Twilert, using sentiment analysis is simple! Log in to your account (or set up a free trial at www.twilert.com) and you will see the Twilert search panel which looks like the following. Here, you can select sentiment keys using the dropdown list under ‘misc’ where you will see ‘:) positive’ and ‘:( negative’ which are your gateway to positive and negative Twitter search.
You can also use any of Twilert’s other advanced search operators to compile a more specific sentiment search. For example, you can add the exact phrase “telephone provider” and the sentiment operator 🙁 in order to find any negative tweets related to that term.
Useful Sentiment Analysis Twitter Searches
One of the things we’re pretty good at is spotting gaps in the market where Twitter research can help you uncover some key information that others might miss. With sentiment research, the right Twitter search terms and formats can help you uncover tweets that undercut the competition, find unhappy customers, and drive additional positive sentiment for your business. Here’s what you need to know –
Brand Name Search on Twitter
To find out what people are saying about your brand, simply type in your brand handle and the sentiment operator. To make sure you don’t miss a mention, you can also use the OR operator to combine search terms. For example, the search below would find instances that mention ‘Pepsi’ or the brand @Pepsi with the negative or positive sentiment search signal.
pepsi OR @pepsi + 🙂 OR 🙁
Competitor search
A super useful search for industry monitoring is to combine the negative search operator with your competitors handle. That way, you see exactly who is unhappy with their service and why! It leads to better behaviors and the opportunity to connect with more potential employees.
Prospective customer inquiry
A surefire way to find customers is to discover the key language terms they use to search for your product. For example search ‘I wish there was’ 🙁 followed by your product or service keyword can help you target potential customers who don’t even know you exist.
Start
To start setting up your sentiment searches today head over to Twilert.
